AppBlaster: New toy turns iPhone into an AR gun

A UK toy company is hoping to turn the iPhone and iPod touch into a blaster gun, bringing the Apple tech to a whole new generation.

In what is likely to appeal to kids of all ages, there will be three toys to kick off what the company is calling “Apptoyz” - a new range of accessories with apps to control them.

The first will be the app blaster, which takes your Apple device and puts it into a blaster for you to fend off invading aliens.

The accompanying free application will be an Augmented Reality app that sees you blasting aliens as they fly towards you in the real-world environment you're in.

A trigger on the gun moves a rubber stamp that presses on the screen, getting around the need for any electronics, which also keeps the price down to under £20.

Available in April, the creators have told us that they are hoping other developers will take the patented blaster and create a bevy of other games and apps for it.

We took it for a quick spin and have to say that it's great fun with us spinning around the stand as if we were in Aliens "checking those corners".

The iPhone or iPod slots into the gun and then using the rubber prodders controls the action on screen when you pull the trigger. The AR element saw Aliens coming at us on screen even though they weren't there in real life.

It will of course depend on what games are available to whether or not that suits your gaming style, however from what we've seen this should be great fun when it comes out later in the year.

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Stuart has been a tech journalist since 1998 and written for a number of publications around the world. Regularly turning up on television, radio and in newspapers, Stuart has played with virtually every gadget available.